Not all dreams are created equally. I’m not talking about your dream to become a ninja or the next Simone Biles. I’m talking about the crazy scenarios your brain puts together when your subconscious takes over. Do you remember your dreams? My husband thinks I’m a very strange dreamer. I disagree, how can it be strange? You don’t have any control of your dreams - that includes topics, people, settings, everything! I think he’s a strange dreamer, so take that!
I’m sure everyone has heard the whole if you die in your sleep, you die in real life. Is that really accurate? How would anyone know? If it was true and you died while you were dreaming you died, you’d be dead and couldn’t tell anyone. I know that’s really morbid, but think about it. Well, I’ve died in my dreams before. I’ll get to that later
.Do you remember your dreams? My husband rarely remembers them. My son rarely remembers his. My daughter sometimes. Me, I remember so many dreams. I remember dreams that I had when I was seven or eight. Vividly. As if I had it last night. I remember weird ones, scary ones, bizarre ones, and I always try to figure out how and why my brain created that combination of ideas. Most of the time, it doesn’t make sense. There are a lot of reasons out there as to why some people remember and other don’t. I found this little article by Healthline interesting. I’m not sure I’m a fantastic memorizer, but I remember everything. I remember word for word conversations that I’ve had with Greg back when we were dating. Believe me, he is not a fan of this trait. But it could impact why I remember so many of my dreams. I also wake up frequently in the night, apparently that helps in remembering dreams, too.
Do you dream in black and white? In color? My 13 year old daughter dreams in black and white. I think that’s pretty cool, but there is a lot of information out there saying that black and white dreams mean you lack emotion, your life is dull and boring. LOL, what? These people have NOT met my daughter. She is anything but lacking in emotion. I did mention that she’s 13, right? However, other research shows that dreams are naturally in greyscale. I personally dream in color, but it’s muted color. Almost like dirty shades of the rainbow. Here’s an interesting article on dreaming in color. I don’t think anything on this topic is Earth-shattering. I’m just interested in what other people see.
Ok, this is where it gets interesting, and I’m sure there are other people out there who do this too. If you wake up during the night and you were dreaming, i.e. you remember your dream you were having, are you able to continue the dream when you go back to sleep? I can! I can’t always control it. But there are times when I want to continue the dream and I’m able to. Waking up more times in the night and having processed the continuation. There are also a handful of times when I have woken up after having a not so great dream, feeling glad that it was over only to go back to sleep and have the nastiness continue. There is information out there that says this is possible simply by not moving when you wake up. Interesting. Greg thinks this is the weirdest thing he’s ever heard. No, I take that back, some of my actual dreams are weirder than this concept.
The next apparently weird thing is that I dream in 3rd person. Not like an birds-eye-view. More like an entity that is just off to the side of my shoulder. Almost touching the “me” of the dream. Similar to that of a angel sitting on your shoulder. I spend the majority of my dreams watching myself, very rarely every seeing my actual face though since I’m looking forward over my shoulder. This is how I was dreaming when I fell off a cliff and died in my dream. A little weird since in my dream my body feel, but the ‘me’ that was watching myself stayed on top of the cliff. I will agree and admit that this was one of the more bizarre dreams.
If you know me, you know that I am an empath and have pretty tough anxiety. In essence, I feel emotions very strongly and they can get pretty overwhelming. I truly feel that my dreams are a way for my brain to process my emotions and stress of the day. Situations that I have gone through, interactions I have had, and all the emotions that are attached to each. But it also means that I tend to remember my highly emotion dreams the most. The dreams that center around topics and interactions that have brought upon the highest emotional reactions during the day. Dreaming in 3rd person seems to almost be a way for my brain to separate from those emotions and to be able to file them away.
But, I’m no psychologist, so I could be just spewing nonsense.
What are your thoughts on dreams? Do you remember them? Do you think you are a weird dreamer?
I’ll end with pieces of two interesting dreams. I mentioned at the beginning that I remember vividly dreams that I had when I was about seven.
In this dream, I was was being chased, and I was running trying to get away. I was running up one of those metal office building type stairwells. You know, the ones where in the movies actors are running down, grabbing onto the railing and swinging themselves around to try to go faster. Well, I was running up. Not so easy to swing around and pick up speed. This stairwell also had the square center where you could look down and see the stairs way below. I was trying to scream, but whoever was chasing me was throwing these little disc things at me. When they went into my mouth, they acted as silencers and I wasn’t able to make a sound so I kept running! Strange dream right!?!?!?
This second snippet isn’t as sad or creepy. Greg still likes to make fun of me for this dream. I had this dream probably within the last 10 years, I can’t remember the dates of them all. Anyway, I was in a spaceship…in space…by myself. Not too weird until I describe the spaceship. It was a one room circular room with a circular bench that went all around the perimeter of the room. That was it. No furniture, no controls, nothing besides the bench. Oh, and the carpet! The entire circular room was carpeted. The floor, the bench, the walls, the ceiling. Every inch was covered in a tannish colored plush carpet. Thankfully, there were a few little circular windows that I was able to look through and see the stars. I actually enjoyed this dream. lol!!
Lessons Learned:
Dreams are fascinating. There is obviously not right or wrong way to dream, and nothing against those people to specialize in dream analysis, but I honestly don’t think there is any clear why to accurately find meaning in a dream. Everything can be interpreted differently by each person that you talk to. I however, love talking about my dreams. It is just one more way for my complicated self to process life and my creative little brain to close out one day and make room for the events and moments of the next day. So really, the lesson here is that there is no lesson. Dreams are dreams.
Sweet Dreams!
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